


Christmas In The Room

by sistermercury



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Demonic Possession, Exorcisms, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Road Trips, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-02-13 11:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12983304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermercury/pseuds/sistermercury
Summary: Across the room, an old woman is angrily muttering something to the nurse at the check-in station, whose bloodshot eyes keep darting over to him and Tomas. Marcus can’t hear them but clearly it’s something about how this hospital is about to kill a priest. OnChristmas.(road trip excerpt: A Very Exorcist Christmas.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> because it isn't a sad gay christmas without sufjan stevens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyGmuxx4wSs

They’re starting to attract stares. 

Marcus is usually one to take comfort in the forced anonymity of the inner city urgent care waiting room, where no one much cares who you are or what’s wrong with you, everyone looking to all corners of the room and not the person in front of them. This one’s as grim as any other; a young college boy keeps escorting another to the restroom, and the muffled noises from behind the door leave little to the imagination, a weary mother holds a flushed and bleary child against her chest, and most of them are continually held hostage by an influx of something worse, a gunshot wound or a stabbing. Televisions silently play close-captioned cable news, none of which could be considered “good.” Humming fluorescent lights cast a green, sickly light over short scenes of misery.

Possessions can hold whole neighborhoods in a thrall of violence, speights of murders and freak accidents. Marcus knows people tend to envision demonic possessions taking place in lonely small towns, creaking cabins in the woods. No, give a demon a city any day, where an overlooked cycle of despair can let it fester and breed in peace. Even better, make it a saint-haunted place like New Orleans, where even the mansions are somehow falling apart. Cracks in every veneer. Candy-colored paint thrown over rot. Lots of little spaces to slip in.

Dreadful case. Lasted weeks. Bright young lad named Antoine, potential college football star, who let a seductive creature whisper in his ear after he saw something he shouldn’t have seen.

The fact that all three of them are still alive almost feels like a fluke.

And maybe this all wouldn’t feel so  _ bad _ were it not for the mostly-broken ceiling speaker above them, whining out a Kenny G. tune, some approximation of “The Christmas Song.” The soprano sax buries itself in a deep pressure point somewhere in the front of Marcus’s skull and he shifts uncomfortably, trying not to disturb Tomas, whose head is carefully perched on his shoulder.

Of course, in ignoring the song, he’s left with the other sound he’s been trying to tune out- Tomas breathing next to him, or  _ trying to _ , the air wheezing and catching in his chest like someone’s got their hands around his throat. His eyebrow is split open, puddling blood beneath his forehead onto Marcus’s jacket, and it’s starting to trail down his shirt, soaking into the grey fabric. He almost wishes he’d wrangled Tomas out of his collar before dragging him in here, because this is one guilty onlooker away from turning into a  _ scene _ .

His own wrist is swollen up to the size of a billiard ball and he couldn’t move it if he tried, at least not without a lot of yelling and vomiting.  He’s burst a vessel in his right eye, red threatening to drown the blue of his irises. There are fingernail scratches hidden under his coat that need tending, lest the scabs begin to fuse with the shirt, and a stripe of skin missing from his cheek, which only hurts when Marcus turns his head or speaks or thinks too loudly. He always reminds Tomas that exorcisms can flare up into violence faster than a lightning strike, but there is no coaching, no turn of phrase to describe the specific hellish circumstances that lead to one of them very nearly losing an eye when a teenage boy built like a tank tries to tear their face from their skull, while the other is being thrown down a flight of stairs by an enraged uncle, who can only hear the horror in the next room and assume the worst.

No charges pressed, obviously. The demon retreats, leaving the boy sobbing for his mother, the family crowding in while Marcus calls an ambulance (for Antoine, never themselves if it can be helped), and drags Tomas into their truck himself and drives them with one hand. All is forgiven, he promises.

Across the room, an old woman is angrily muttering something to the nurse at the check-in station, whose bloodshot eyes keep darting over to him and Tomas. Marcus can’t hear them but clearly it’s something about how this hospital is about to kill a priest. On  _ Christmas _ .

With a sigh, he turns his head, shrugging slightly to try and wake him. His face is very nearly pressed into Tomas’ mess of sweat-matted curls, greasy and tangled, and were this a private moment-

But it’s not. And he’s reminded of that as Tomas moans quietly, such a tiny, wounded sound pressed closely to Marcus’s ear, it makes the fine hairs on his arm stand stiff. Before he can gently move him upward, he loses him to a coughing fit, something wracking and  _ wet _ that shakes his entire frame. It’s drawing unneeded attention. Marcus shudders, heat rising in his face as he runs a hand across his back. This better not make someone’s bloody twitter account, he thinks, eyes scanning for recording smartphones.

“Easy,” he murmurs, trying to ignore the stares. Tomas shakes his head, trying to sit himself upright, one hand pressed against his ribcage like he’s been shot, and Marcus realizes with a heavy sigh that something under that hand is very likely to be cracked or broken.

“Marcus, I can’t breathe-” Tomas chokes out. It’s his first full sentence in over an hour. He’s starting to look feverish, and all Marcus wants is to carry him to some warm, safe bed far far away from here.

“Yes you can, you’re panicking.” he says, gentle as can be as he reaches up, covering his good hand with his shirt sleeve and tries to dab the congealed blood off of his face. (It’s useless, Marcus merely smears it around, mixes it in with the sweat and the dirt. He comes out looking worse than before.)

Tomas grimaces and swallows hard, muttering out a shaky “ _ No estoy entrando en pánico. Esto duele.”  _ Marcus scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, so you can breathe enough to argue with me?”

Tomas narrows his eyes, but whatever fire he’s got inside is quickly gone, and he settles his head back against the wall, eyes falling shut once again.

The hospital bills will go to Bennett.  They always do. That, and the bail bonds. This was the agreement. Limited contact, small paper trail. Pay in cash, disposable phones. This may have been decided  _ after _ Marcus asked him if he could be their “acting sugar daddy.”

(Not that he regrets it, or would ever take it back.)

_ “Father Tomas is committed to a vow of poverty. It’s important he remembers that.” _

_ “Afraid I’ll spoil him, Bennett?” _

_ “If only you knew.” _

But Bennett could be counted upon to bury the important things deep enough as to not arouse suspicion.  Can’t very well fight the darkness if one were nearly dead or incarcerated, and Marcus has been both on numerous accounts, sometimes both at once.

“Thomas Ortega?”

There’s an expectant nurse in wintery-blue scrubs holding a clipboard, followed by many heads turned in unison, and Marcus realizes he may have melted in relief. He gently taps Tomas’ cheek, taking a moment to gauge his temperature with the back of his knuckles, before he remembers where they are- with people who can help, not in the cab of their truck, hunched over a first aid kit.

“C’mon. They’re playing our song.”

Tomas’ eyes flutter open for a second, struggling to find their focus. Marcus loses him quickly.

He does the work for him, gently moving Tomas’ hand from his side, hoisting him up out of the chair with an arm under his shoulder, and an unseemly noise pops up from the depths of Marcus’s lungs. In this ad-hoc traveling apprenticeship, Tomas seems to have dedicated himself to the art of being unobtrusive and observant. He  _ seems _ small, the uniform shrinks and hides him. Marcus forgets ( _ tries not to notice, same thing _ ) that he has the muscles of a boxer, and the subsequent density of a neutron star. He’s  _ heavy. _ Never mind the three plus weeks of not sleeping, not eating, holding down a demon with all the strength in his old and very mortal body-

At the very moment Marcus feels his knees start to buckle, he’s rescued by a very tall young woman, who must be barely 18, her long braids tied up into a thick knot above her head. Her maroon t-shirt says  _ Loyola _ and it’s nearly identical to the very very very old one Tomas wears to bed sometimes. She looks so tired. Everyone looks so tired, and the whole of the world  _ feels _ tired when a demon runs. There is no relief. Not really. Marcus blinks, and exhales as she lifts the burden.

“Thank you, love.”

She smiles timidly and helps him manage Tomas’ near deadweight for a few steps before another nurse steps in, a wheelchair produced out of thin air. Marcus exhales shakily, swallowing back the nausea as he holds his arm against his chest. His hand is starting to swell up as well, long fingers becoming fat and grotesque at their joints.

“She called me Thomas” he hears below him. Tomas’ head lists awkwardly backwards and Marcus reaches out, one steadying hand on the back of his neck.

“She did.” he agrees mutely.

“Why do I always let people do that?” he mumbles, and Marcus can’t help it, he smiles, because there is nothing really  _ left _ in him. Before he can answer, the young nurse in blue, a sturdy auburn-haired woman kneels down, and tries to gauge the condition of these broken things she’s been charged with. A tiny silver medallion dangles from her neck, obscured by the angle. This, Marcus knows, is sometimes the only blessing of the collar in a public space. They will be gentle with him.

Before the woman can get a word in edgewise, Tomas blinks away the sweat beginning to bead into his eyes, and shakes his head. “Take him first, he’s broken something.” Marcus’s fingers slide up from his neck, gently into his hair, and the nurse’s eyes flicker upward towards  _ him _ , with his bleeding eye and his busted wrist and his ugly, torn-up face, all sorts of filth flecked across his clothing like a house painter in the 9th level of Hell-

And Marcus gives her a look that suggests she had better not bloody dare.

“We’ll get it all sorted out, Father.” she says with unforced kindness and patience. “Let’s get you looked at and Mr.-”

“Keane.” It comes out nervously. It’s not a good look, to be paired with a battered priest.

She nods and waves over the one who’d come to their rescue with a wheelchair, a (remarkably) handsome young Asian man. “Ben, if you’ll take Mr. Keane here.”  

Before Handsome Ben can whisk him away, he stops, and looks to the girl in the Loyola shirt, now back in the row of hard, unforgiving pleather seats, looking at her phone and pretending not to watch the scene in front of her. He rests a gentle hand on the hem of her coat sleeve. “What’s your name, darling?” She looks up, deer in headlights for a moment. “Shintia.” she replies softly. Marcus smiles, and he knows that it is crumpled and broken, lacking grace or comfort because those things have been all but bled out of him by now, but the smile she gives back reminds him that he may yet have some claim on God’s mercy.

“Happy Christmas, Shintia.”

Tomas is already gone by the time he looks back up, disappeared through the ER doors. “Sorry you get the consolation prize, Ben” he says, starting to head in that direction without anyone’s permission.

Handsome Ben scurries after him, and, to his credit, laughs.

 

\-------------------

 

Handsome Ben (Benjamin Nguyen, he learns) is thorough, and funny, and doesn’t mind when Marcus heaves stomach acid into a trash can after they pop his wrist back into place. (It’s the noise, really, that hideous  _ pop _ that sets him off, he swears.) Casts have come a long way since Marcus was a boy, remembering the itchy woolen padding and flaky plaster that weighed down his skinny little arms. Boys in overrun homes break a lot of bones, sprain a lot of ankles. He wonders if there’s any good cartilage left in some of these joints, lifetimes of fractures, wear and tear, bad posture and even worse places to sleep, making everything in him brittle and stretched too thin to be useful. Exorcists don’t have much use for physicals. 

They let him off with a reinforced plastic brace, something light and adjustable, and tell him to keep it on for three weeks, maybe a month at most. Marcus isn’t sure if he can withstand a month of Tomas mother-henning him over keeping it on, which he most assuredly will.

There seems to be a question on Ben’s mind as he begins to apply a few butterfly strips to Marcus’s cheek. “So...you and the priest…”

He quirks an eyebrow, and God help him, even  _ that _ hurts. “What about it?” he sighs. 

“Usually when we get priests in here, they’re not the ones in the beds. Just…” Ben shrugs innocuously. “Can’t tell me there’s not a story there.” His posture stiffens and his heart freefalls into the pit of his stomach.  _ Two months in and I’ve already broken him _ .

“Is he alright?”

“Stable, as far as I know.”

Marcus scoffs quietly, and fidgets in the chair as Ben continues to sanitize and mend, held captive by his own injuries. “That’s not a sign of confidence, dear Ben.” he mumbles, and before he can make Ben promise to find someone who  _ does _ know, the doctor on duty steps in.

He’s an older man whose look and bearing remind him somewhat of Bennett’s, which is a strange comfort, but also lets him know that he is, in short, probably about to be raked over the coals. He consults a chart, and then compares what he’s read with the dirty heap of Marcus Keane in front of him.

“Mr. Keane,” he addresses in a deep baritone. Ben begins to clean up around them, tossing dirty gauze, empty syringes into the orange biohazard receptacles. Marcus sighs, leaning back into his chair. He’s on his 36th hour without sleep, now staring down the barrel of many more. It’s always a test, if a doctor will believe whatever he pulls from his deep gallery of lies. “My name is Dr. Collins.” He sits beside Marcus, looking over the copious notes scrawled out over the pages in front of him.

Marcus extends the hand in the cast, fingers still comically deformed, and instantly regrets it, baring his teeth and pressing the arm against his chest. “Sorry.” he mumbles, dry-throated and not that sorry. Dr. Collins, at least, looks bemused. “Habit?” he asks. Marcus nods.

“That’s what we call a dinner fork fracture. You’ll want to keep painkillers on hand, but nothing heavy. Elevation, rest, and time. Although going by your x-ray,” he says, pulling it out and holding it it up to the light. It’s nauseating, seeing one’s bones  _ snapped apart _ from where they’re supposed to be. “This must seem pretty old hat to you.” Marcus shrugs. This man is seeing him and seeing through him. He doesn’t have time for that.

“Where’s Tomas?” ( _ Not Father Tomas. Not Tomas Ortega or Mr. Ortega. Tomas, his apprentice, and his partner, this living Son of God that he is responsible for, that he could have lost in less than a second. _ )

Dr. Collins tilts his head in understanding. “Father Tomas is in recovery. He’s cracked three ribs on his right side, along with a few contusions. Good amount of bruising. Nothing permanent.” Going off the look on Marcus’s face, he continues to patiently reassure.

“He’ll mend just fine, but we’d like to keep him overnight for observation.” Marcus slumps into his chair, as if nothing else but the earth’s gravity were keeping him in a solid state, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, managing a deep breath.

_ I did not do this _ . It’s what he must remind himself every time Tomas takes a hit, every time a damned creature with vomit-caked lips and broken teeth tries to undo him with the intimation of a loved one’s voice. He did not somehow con Tomas into this, although it always very nearly feels that way. He’s not the same anymore, that fresh-faced, wide-eyed seeker who approached him at St. Aquinas with all the delicacy of a man approaching a wounded animal. Open-hearted and easily seduced. No, Tomas is a man of his own mind, and gives himself and his body to God with so much well-meaning recklessness, it will probably kill them both.

Tomas put himself on the other side of that door for Marcus, knowing an angry and frightened man, a man who thought Tomas was hurting his nephew, a man so much bigger than him, would be on the other side.

_ "Marcus. Finish it.” _

He forces himself upward, leaning elbows on his knees, fingers running through his filth-matted hair. He’s in  _ desperate _ need of a wash. They’d been staying in the family’s back room for the last few weeks, and it just now hits him that the both of them are homeless. He can’t imagine they’ll find a suitable bed in the city, three nights before Christmas day. That was a problem for future Marcus, though. Right now-

“Can I see him?”

Dr. Collins considers him, and this, in the end, is only fair. “Father Tomas was admitted under my recommendation. The three fractures are bad enough, but there are also signs of dehydration, periods of sleep deprivation, undernourishment, anaemia...Frankly, I’d want him in a bed without him being busted up. Could say the same for you.”

All Marcus can do is sigh and nod, his face pulled in a tight, shameful grimace. He forgets that not everyone sees these things as signs of their willingness to endure these horrors without rest. They don’t see the horrors at all, wouldn’t know the fierceness to which they’d commit themselves to harm to save the soul of a complete stranger.

“We’re obligated to report signs of assault to the police, Mr. Keane.”

He quickly shakes his head. “It’s been handled. No charges.” The doctor nods again, staring at Marcus to imply that he is not  _ asking _ for an explanation, but, rather, demanding.

“Father Tomas was called to help intervene in a case of drug addiction. Part of a new Archdiocese outreach program. I assisted.”

That seems to settle, if not uneasily. “And?”

“It got nasty. Usually does. Families get emotional.”

“How do you...assist? With these cases?” Marcus almost smiles. In this room, he’s been stripped down to his undershirt, all of his bruises, tattoos and old scars smiling back. He and Tomas do not  _ match _ ; Marcus in his leather, with a face like a dockside barnacle and a gaze that always lasts a second too long for comfort, everything about him splotchy and pale pink and subterranean, scarred and ever so slightly  _ off _ . Tomas, with his deep golden eyes, and smooth olive skin, gently freckled, sun-kissed. With a smile just imperfect enough to put one at ease, reassure them that he is human.

“Used to be my own work. As an ex-priest.” he says, voice pushing through those words with a fragility that he still doesn’t like. Dr. Collins sits back in mild surprised.

“Used to be? Figured most priests for lifers. How’s that work?”

Marcus looks up at him, eyes gone cold as a lake frozen over, and swallows on the lump in his throat.

“Believe it or not, the church can run out of uses for people.”

And then he looks away, doesn’t care to watch the man chew that one over, whatever he thinks it might imply. Marcus knows it’s usually never anything  _ good _ . He does not yet possess the strength and silver tongue to lie and suggest that he left of his own free will. Not even after what’s been done to him. Old habits, he supposes.

“Are you family?” Dr. Collins asks, not unkindly, even when he already knows the answer. The words fall into him like an avalanche, picking up the pain and fatigue and sorrow and unbearable guilt and all but burying him alive. And he realizes, after the doctor does, that he’s crying. Marcus clenches his jaw and shakes his head, coarsely gesticulating with his good hand as if to say, No, Obviously not.

“His only family is thousands of miles away.” he says, wiping at his face, knowing these feelings are fully useless. In another life, Tomas is preparing St. Anthony’s to celebrate the birth of Christ, and fretting over what to give Luis (what he wants to buy him versus what he can actually afford.) Marcus doesn’t know if anyone’s been called, if Luis knows that he won’t be seeing his Uncle this Christmas because he’s in a hospital, beaten within an inch of his life. “No, no, I’m his partner.”

That phrase always buys a mixed reaction or two.

In this case, it’s the accidental magic word.

“I’ll get you clearance. It’ll just take a moment.” Even as servant of God, Marcus tends to be blind-sided by people like this, who do not struggle to good and be kind. He’d had that pearl of hope beaten from him at an early age. Marcus nods, worn-out features softened and blurred into nothing less than sheer, shining gratitude.

It does take but a moment, as as Marcus chucks his vomit-stained sweater into the bin, and delicately slides his coat and backpack back on over the cast and bandages, Dr. Collins reappears, and leads him down the hall of what appears to have been a tremendously long night for this fleet of healers. There’s a closed door, with a whiteboard next to it, ‘Fr. Tomas’ scrawled in blue marker. Through the window, Marcus can see dimmed lights, and a still, sleeping figure. He sighs, placing his hand against the wood.

“Sure you don’t have one of those beds for me?” he asks half-heartedly enough to assure he’s joking.  Dr. Collins actually laughs, bless him, and shakes his head.

“No room at the inn.”

Marcus makes a quick tsk-ing sound, and grins. “ _Blasphemy_ , doctor.” he says, before stepping inside.


	2. two turtle doves

The door clicks shut, and suddenly Marcus feels like something’s gone off with the earth’s gravity. There’s an oppressive weight on his head and his shoulders that seems to want to crush him into the floor and squeezes the air out of his lungs and he pretends that it has nothing to do with the sight of Tomas in a hospital bed. 

Up until now, it’s gone...Can he say it’s gone well? He’s no born tutor and Tomas, well, he’s a patient neophyte right up until the point when he’s decidedly  _ not _ , and can be so stubborn and defiant, Marcus wonders how he ever thought he was just another church lapdog. They argue. Some days, they  _ endlessly  _ argue, and these are the days when the demons sink their teeth into them, rending flesh and leaving holes when they can be pried away. Spiritually speaking, at least. And Marcus has begun to learn what he can and cannot hide.

“ _Lost lamb..._ _ Is he your shepherd?” _ The thing inside Antoine had been whispering in Tomas’ ear for days.  _ “You saw him and thought God finally had use for you. The blind leading the blind. God broke him and he’ll break you, too.” _

(He can’t count how many times he’s entered an exorcism chamber, crucifix in hand, only to be greeted with a vision of Tomas on the filthy mattress instead, violated, dead or dying, torn to pieces, eyes wide open and covered with a bloody film, blackness spilling the from the corners of his ruined mouth.

_ “You knew,”  _ the thing hisses in his gentle, lovely voice.  _ “You knew what they would do to me, Marcus. Why did you let them hurt me?”  _ )

He can only imagine what Tomas sees. Sometimes Marcus wonders if it has anything to do with him, and then he remembers that pride, no matter what form it takes, is a cardinal sin.

This Tomas is not dead, or dying, but as images go, it feels no less cursed than a demon’s hallucination. Marcus approaches slowly, taking things in second by second; how small he looks, swallowed up in the white hospital gown, IV lines drifting down from above, tucked neatly into the veins of his right arm. Thorny stitches poke out from his eyebrow, and there’s a nasal cannula strung across his face, providing the oxygen that his halted breathing can’t quite manage. His skin looks like paper, dull and lifeless save for the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead and bruises starting to bleed through like watercolors on canvas. But whatever they have him on, it must be good, because his features are slack and peaceful. He shouldn’t have to buy rest this way, but it’s deserved nonetheless.

Marcus realizes he’s been holding his breath, and forces himself down into the horrific chair near the bed, swallowing back the bitter taste in his mouth, which lingers nonetheless. The whispering machines and rain pattering against the window are trying their best to lure him to sleep, but the impulse crashes like a wave against a brick wall, some foolish impulse that tells him to stay awake, that whatever lies waiting behind his eyelids will be much worse than facing up to the battered man in front of him.

_ Why did you let them hurt me. _

Why indeed.

Besides. No one ever came to visit him on any trip to the infirmary. That much loneliness shouldn’t be bearable.

He reaches out with his good hand, pale spindly fingers, cold and blood-stained from where he’d touched them to Tomas’ forehead, and takes the hand lying motionless on top of the wool blanket. There’s a heart monitor taped to the thick veins, chiming out steady beeps above Marcus’s head, a small and comforting sound. His hand is warm and solid, like  _ everything else _ about him and he finds himself breathing out a faint laugh.

“You fool,” he mumbles with a horrifying fondness.

He starts to gently slip through words, prayers usually offered for the ailing possessed, whose bodies have been hijacked and submitted to terrifying and ceaseless rot. “Almighty and Everlasting God, the eternal salvation of those who believe in You, hear me on behalf of your servants who are ill, for whom I humbly beg the help of your mercy…” He goes on like this, asking for grace, when he realizes he really wants to say  _ Don’t you ever do this to him again, do you hear me?  _

As if he’s been told on by the universe, Tomas stirs, just barely, and Marcus sits bolt upright, might as well have his heart exposed and bleeding all over the bed, hand sliding up to rest against his bicep. His eyes flutter open for a second before falling shut again, a tired and faint whimper creeping up from his throat before he seems to settle again. With a shaky exhale, Marcus lets him go, and stands up, joints popping as he does, and leans on the safety railing lining the bed. “Tomas, wherever you are…Stay there. It’s all still the same out here, I’m afraid.” he murmurs, using his shirt sleeve to wipe the sweat from Tomas’ brow. He looks at the IV bags hung from the pole near his head. Painkillers and sedatives, stronger than what he can provide, and knows that after tonight, they will still have broken bones, fractures and weakness that will not be able to withstand another month-long exorcism. Marcus leans down, tense and hesitating, almost waiting for Tomas to wake up and scream at him to go away.

_ Why did you let them hurt me. _

He kisses his forehead and pulls back quickly, and he can’t decide if it feels like an apology or something different.

 

\------------------------------

 

He wakes in a veritable pretzel knot, folded into the chair like the first bit of a circus trick. Fresh guilt slashes through him from head to toe, before he realizes that Tomas is just as he left him. Resting. Healing. 

Pre-dawn light is beginning to creep through the windows, faint orange after the night’s rain and there seems to be the promise of sun after all. He’s been sitting on it, but he’s now realizing that he could probably bring in a full symphony orchestra in here, and Tomas would still be too buried in the sedative haze to even open an eye.

Extracting his phone from his pocket, Marcus fumbles with the speed-dial to Bennett, finger joints unhappily crackling as his non-dominant hand began to grow tired of doing all the work. It doesn’t take Bennett long to answer. He figures it must be early evening in the Vatican.

_ “That one took you long enough.”  _

Marcus sighs and leans back, kicking his feet up onto the railing of Tomas’ bed. He’s about to name this backache “Devon.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you liked me for my technique, not my speed, darling.”

He can’t actually  _ hear _ him bristling, but he can feel it, like a spiritual movement of its own.

_ “Have you or haven’t you dispelled the demon, Marcus?” _

“Yeah, yeah, it’s gone. All right in the world, listen-” He doesn’t have time to go through the full debriefing and check in. “There was a bit of an...incident. We’re uh-” The shame heats up his face and makes his mouth run dry. “Checked in at the hospital right now.” There’s another pause, but he can hear Bennett typing, very likely trying to check the news for anything too incriminating. 

_ “Is it serious?” _

Biting on the inside of his cheek, he glances over at Tomas. The bruises look uglier in the morning light.

“No. We’ll come out with everything still attached, but one of the family got their hands on Tomas.” he sighs, trying not to relive the whole ugly scene in his head again. “Threw him down a flight of bloody stairs.”

_ “That’s terrible.”  _ He actually seems to mean it.

“I need a room. A bed. Somewhere we can crash for a few days…” Looking over, he sees Tomas start to stir, soft features beginning to register a faint grimace of pain. “Maybe a week. I can’t take him back out there, not like this.”

_ “I think that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Marcus.” _

His fingers grip the trac phone a little too tightly. “Are you listening to me?” he (quietly) barks. And before he can go off, he’s met with a curt, but calming-

_ “Of course. Won’t be long.” _

Sinking back with a boneless slump, he stares at the ceiling and feels relief explode in his chest. “Thank you,” he exhales, and hangs up, and wonders if he should pray, give some sort of thanks, or maybe if he should just be nicer to Bennett from now on. Probably both. Glancing over, he realizes that someone’s left a bouquet of red poinsettias on the bedside table, it’s base wrapped with a white satin bow.

Sliding his chair over, he inspects it, finding no card, and assumes it must be something donated by the Church, maybe. Trying to spread cheer in a place where there wasn’t much to be found. He runs a thumb over one of the thick, leathery petals before gently plucking out a whole flower. He spreads it gently across the pages of his bible, on a page that’s somehow escaped his “annotations”, flattening it into a scarlet star, before pressing the book shut.

There’s a noise behind him, something sharp and wet, and it takes a moment for Marcus’s dulled senses to realize that it’s Tomas, trying to breathe, his back arched ever so slightly with a look of undiluted pain on his face. He stays like that for a moment, suspended in agony before he settles back, coughing harshly. Staggering upwards, Marcus leans over, hands hovering anxiously in the air, before he sees Tomas go for one of the IVs in his arm, fingers weakly scrabbling against the tape and he rushes in, taking each of his hands, and holding them there. “No, no, leave that there, love-” he murmurs, although he’s not sure what gets through. Tomas is breathing so roughly, his face is flushed and veins bulge blue near his temple. 

Pain is shooting up Marcus’s entire arm in quick, vicious bolts as he forces Tomas’ hands back down to his chest, pressing them there is if Tomas is a corpse to be buried, and he tries to push through it, ignoring his weakening knees. “It’s alright...it’s alright…” he keeps one hand on Tomas’ trembling chest until he’s sure he’s not going to rip the needles from his skin, the other smoothing back his hair in gentle, repetitive sweeps. He knows how much this hurts. Marcus can’t think of many bones he  _ hasn’t  _ broken, and he knows that right now, each breath must feel like a stab to the lungs with a hot, sharp knife.

“Marcus-” it comes out in a bone-dry whisper and Marcus looks around in frustration for a moment, laying eyes on a clean washcloth and filled wash basin. (Also not previously there, and Marcus wonders if it’s actually for  _ him _ , considering his filthy state.) Dipping the cloth in the water, he sits back down, carefully pressing it against his lips.

“Don’t talk if it hurts.” he says, looking at the call button hanging near Tomas’ head, knowing he should probably alert the nurses, but he drinks in these few seconds selfishly; Tomas leaning into him, his warmth seeping into the skin of his palm. Tomas has dark under-eye circles and bruises curling up the sides of his face in sickly greens and purples, but he’s still a wanton beauty. Marcus can’t believe he hasn’t scared him off by now. Maybe Tomas wasn’t living like a king in Chicago, in his apartment that shook when the train passed, with his crumbling old church, but he wasn’t  _ here _ .

Of course, Tomas doesn’t listen to him. He slowly opens his eyes, and gazes up at Marcus, half-lidded, bloodshot, and questioning. “The exorcism…” he mumbles, and Marcus nods affirmatively, crooked mouth curling in a reassuring smile.

“Done.” He extracts his hands. His fingers are sticky from the blood and sweat in Tomas’ hair, fine tremors pulsing up past his wrists. “I know that was nasty work, but-”

Tomas shakes his head. The haze in his eyes is beginning to recede, and Marcus sees underneath it the one thing he didn’t want- plain and abject guilt.

“I could have done better.” he murmurs slowly. Marcus sits back, acid churning in his empty stomach, and he doesn’t want to look away but he can’t help it.

“How on  _ earth _ do you figure that, Tomas?” he says, trying not to chastise. “You stopped them from getting in, that boy would’ve likely died if you hadn’t.”

“It shouldn’t have come to that.”

_ No,  _ he thinks,  _ it shouldn’t have. _ All he can care to remember is the sound of struggling, a sickening silence, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor beneath him. By the time he rushed out of the room, the infraction already forgotten as the boy’s parents ran in to find their son, to hear his voice for the first time in a month, the man responsible was sitting beside Tomas, already rigid and sobbing from the shame. A loving uncle, just like Tomas, who begged forgiveness as Marcus pulled his partner’s crumpled body off the landing and tried to stem the blood streaming down his face.

For a hateful moment, Marcus had very nearly told the man to piss off but he thinks on Mother Bernadette. Doesn’t everyone know? Compassion is his thing now.

Scoffing lightly, he considers Tomas’ battered face, and thinks about all the bruises he can’t see.

“Leave it to you to find another way to beat yourself up.” he mumbles, although the smile on his lips betrays the expression. He claps a hand on the bar and pulls himself up with the trademarked groan of aging joints and tired bones.

“You look awful. Let’s find someone who can do something about that.” Marcus tries to be cheery, to dispel this darkness clouding Tomas’ head, because if he’s honest, he’s not sure he can handle caring for the man if he’s going to look like a kicked stray dog for the duration. “Although I think they want us out. You’re distracting the nurses.” he teases, demonstrating with the poinsettia arrangement.

Tomas just squints at the red flowers. “Is it Christmas?” he asks softly. All of the sudden, he seems terribly young again.

Before Marcus can answer, his phone rings. Bennett does little but provide him with an address and a check-in time. He seems….pleased with himself?

_ “Happy Christmas, Marcus.” _

He hangs up the phone, and glances at Tomas with an earnest smile on his face.

“No, but it’s about to be.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> musical chapter mood provided by alana henderson's "two turtle doves": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQvbdcesSwg
> 
> come scream with me on the tungl @gammarayed


	3. sister winter

Working with another human being has required...adjustment. Of priorities, of attitude, of personal hygiene standards, but mostly of  _ time _ . Marcus can’t even quantify how much time he’s lost in the revolving door of his life, different rooms, different hostels and seedy motels, sleeping in cars and on the sofas of anguished families. Most of that has been forgotten, frankly, his memories compartmentalized into spaces too monopolized by a demon’s face to be truly tangible. It would be poetic to say he remembers everything, every moment, but it would also be untrue. 

His childhood is hardwired inside. No getting rid of that.

The failures, too, few and far between as they may be, those are branded within, a gnarled mark of shame inside to match the exterior, perhaps.

To watch another man live his life in tandem has been…”illuminating” is not the right word, and “terrifying” veers too far in the opposite direction. Exhausting, maybe. Tomas is young, and lives each day with his heart wide open, sometimes painfully so. Seems impractical to him. You never know what might crawl inside.

Of course, Marcus is only casually wounded by Tomas’ youth and vitality because he never thought he’d look in the mirror one day and see a 51-year-old man staring back at him. And  _ God,  _ is it one hell of a reflection. He’d ducked into the men’s room for an embarrassingly thorough sink shower, and even for a face used to taking a knick or two, he’s outdone himself. His entire left eye is filled with blood, bright blue in it’s center, making him look nothing less than ghoulish. The skin on his cheek is a mess of bandages and old, rusted blood, fingernail scratches curling up his neck under bruised, yellow skin, and some parts of him are so used to the abuse, they’re growing scar tissue like tree bark. He’s glad neither of them have to go begging for a room tonight. Tomas looks like he’s been mugged, and, honestly, Marcus looks like the perpetrator.  

This whole place is starting to make him itch. Tomas has been swallowed up in a tide of well-meaning nurses who want to talk about things like “physical therapy” and “pain management”, and keep looking at  _ him _ like something scraped off the roadside. It’s possible he’s projecting. Either way, it’s no fun to watch Tomas grin and bear everything while he lies and swears to dedicate time and effort to recovery like a good boy. He is, after all, Marcus’s student, schooling himself on the appropriate unhealthy impulses.

The hallway looks safe enough, door closed, no young residents trying to snatch glances at the “hot priest” (Marcus may not be young but his hearing is still as sharp as a damn tack), and he knocks, waiting a moment, or well, a second, before entering. Privacy was easily the first thing to go in their first few forays in the world rent-by-the-hour motel rooms.

“You a free man, yet?”  Marcus ducks in carefully, closing the door as he does. Tomas is on his feet, which seems like good news, but Marcus can see he’s so unsteady, leaning against the frame of the bed as he fumbles with a t-shirt in his hands, trying to turn it right-side-in. His face is grey, drenched with sweat, and the bruises on the right side of his chest are nearly black at their epicenter, like blood is still pooling ceaselessly under his skin.

Marcus swallows hard and crosses his arms. “Hurts just looking at you.” he admits.

“They told me it helps to sleep sitting up the first few days,” Tomas mumbles idly, finally getting his shirt the way he wants it. It earns him another wince from Marcus.

“What, am I supposed to strap you down, then?” Tomas is a  _ dedicated _ side and stomach sleeper, all loose limbs and odd angles. Clearly a man who’s never had to worry about sharing a bed with another human. Tomas just flashes him a dark look that he supposes might imply that he’d simply prefer to be smothered. He’s about to slip his t-shirt over his head before Marcus reaches out.

“Wait-” Shaking his head, he takes the shirt from Tomas’ hands. “Bad idea,  _ hermano. _ ” he says, digging around in the disorganized pile of clothes in the duffle before extracting a slightly wrinkled-but clean flannel. Tomas just squints at him. His pupils are the size of dimes, and Marcus figures he has maybe a half-hour before he’s out like a light no matter where he is.

“What are you doing…” he murmurs warily, as Marcus takes his arm and starts to slide it through one sleeve. He barely moves him, treats his body like he’s dressing a store mannequin. Tomas has gotten used to his...tactile sensibilities over time, integrated it into his picture of the way the world now works. It’s both a blessing and...well…

Tomas gets a raised eyebrow and he lets the shirt dangle off of one shoulder like he’s some sort of absurd underwear model, Marcus’s lips pursed in the faintest hint of annoyance. “Go ahead, try and raise your arms past your waist.”

Tomas just sighs. “No.”

“Hmm?”

“Because it’s going to hurt and you’re going to get that very satisfied look on your face.”

Marcus grins and carefully slips the shirt over his other shoulder, ignoring the painter’s palette of horrible colors blooming across his back and chest.

“Never said you couldn’t be taught.” He lets Tomas go about the buttons, pulling it tighter around his neck while trying to gauge his general...anything. And maybe that’s not fair, it’s probably exhausting him even more. “Are you alright?” he tests quietly.

Tomas doesn’t look at him. Somehow Marcus knew he wouldn’t. It’s a scab he won’t pick at until he absolutely needs to.

“I’ll be better when we leave.”

With a dutiful nod, Marcus begins to pick up the bags, slinging them across his bony shoulders like a man about to climb a mountain.

“I think your pitiful state’s got Bennett feeling charitable.” he says, checking his phone for messages one more time, as if waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him.  _ Just kidding _ ,  _ enjoy sleeping in a pickup truck with your critically infirm protege.  _ But nothing comes.

“Marcus?”

He has the door held open with his foot, handling his own bag, phone in the other, trying to remember what’s been done with his keys, where he even  _ parked _ , the events leading up to dragging Tomas into urgent care all blurring together. “Mmm?” says, turning his head slightly.

“Marcus…” he hears again, but it’s fainter, thin and weak, like Tomas is mumbling in his sleep, and something cold pangs in Marcus’s stomach before he turns around.

Tomas is clutching to the railing of the bed like it’s the only thing holding him up, his breath coming in quick, uneven gasps. Marcus hold his good hand out, approaching cautiously. The man’s shoulders are shaking, parts of him twitching oddly, like he’s being prodded with a taser. “Tomas…?” His head lists to the side with a pained inhale, and Marcus realizes he can see the whites of his eyes and nothing else.

Everything Marcus is holding crashes, and he shucks off the bags fast enough to hurt.

Tomas folds the second Marcus touches him, like a marionette whose strings have been cut. It’s a graceless fall to the floor, unseemly and awkward as Marcus risks refracturing his wrist all over again just to make sure Tomas’ head doesn’t crack open on the linoleum floor. “No no no no no…” he hears himself mumble over and over- not his most helpful prayer- hands reaching up, frantic, tapping his cheek, his neck, shaking his shoulders.

“Tomas, can you hear me?”

Tomas twitches in his arms, sighing and shifting almost as if he were asleep. The whole of him is clammy, slick with sweat, button-down sticking to his back, and it’s no wonder, really, Marcus can  _ feel _ his body heat through the thick material. If the fear weren’t so paralyzing, the anger would consume him like a man on fire.

“ _ What kind of bloody hospital is this- _ ” he hisses, adjusting quickly so that Tomas’ head rests in his lap. “Hello?!” he calls, wondering if he can be heard behind the closed door. Glancing down, his heart seems to lodge in his throat. Tomas’ lips are moving, as as Marcus pulls him closer, he hears slurred, whispered Spanish. He’s  _ praying _ . Everything seems to have slowed, Tomas isn’t seizing in agony, he seems...awake. Leaning in, Marcus presses a thumb to his eyelid, searching for a brown iris, and finding nothing but a milky void.

( _ He almost looks _ -)

“Fuck’s sake-” he mutters, not-so delicately pulling Tomas up by his shoulders.  _ Sorry love,  _ he thinks, before reeling back and slapping him across the face.

It’s like hitting a reset button.

Tomas gasps back to life, quite literally, fingers scrabbling for purchase in Marcus’s shirt. His body seems to remember it’s been hurt, going stiff as a board for a moment as his breathing returns to that, awful, dragging, pained irregularity. “There you are…” Marcus breathes, parroting a phrase he knows he’s said to possession victims one or a thousand times in his life. Tomas opens his mouth like he’s about to speak, but the pain gets the better of him, pale features contorting into a sharp wince.

“Oh god-” is all Marcus gets.

“I’m gonna get you a doctor,” Marcus says, soothing his hand over his back. He attempts to extract himself from the floor, but Tomas gets ahold of the collar of his shirt, pulling him back with surprising strength. He shakes his head.

“No.”

It says something, he realizes, something about how much control Tomas exercises over his heart, that Marcus even  _ considers it. _

“Not a discussion.”

Before he can get up, Tomas pulls him back again, both hands clamping around his shoulders. His eyes are clear and urgent, everything about his posture seemingly ready to  _ beg.  _

“Just get me out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cannot and should not, in good conscience, be allowed to do this, and i am sorry
> 
> (shoutout to Ari for the seedling of an idea, i really appreciate it <3) 
> 
> (also also thank you @ Margot_Kim, who has been an endless soundboard for all my garbage) 
> 
> chapter mood: "sister winter" by sufjan stevens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OCdS5S20dg


	4. interlude

The drive starts with the Uptown hospital, stuck right next to a very beautiful, very lush neighborhood, stuffed with old mansions, their columns wrapped in bright white Christmas lights, perfectly manicured lawns and hundred-year-old oak trees hanging heavy in the road. Cross one major intersection, go beneath the interstates, they find themselves in tent city, a cold and wet land of graffiti and concrete, some poor destitute soul hanging near the road with a tattered cardboard sign. Every city in the world contains these places, Marcus has seen enough of them to know, but in New Orleans, they seem smashed together so closely as to create some sort of perfect Dickensian conundrum. 

It’s all a welcome distraction from talking. The truck idles in morning rush-hour traffic, and after a few minutes of pretending to take in the surroundings, Tomas falls asleep, damp air pressed against the window. He still breathes with a thick, dragging unease that makes Marcus quietly click on the radio. It takes a few moments of tuning for him to remember what day it is, or rather, what day it’s going to be and he can’t  _ quite _ handle Andy Williams screaming at him that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas in a place that doesn’t get cold seems...off, which is almost funny, considering his generally tenuous grasp on what enjoying the holiday actually entailed. He knows all the songs talk about snow, though.

Glancing over at Tomas, Marcus wonders if he might actually find it comforting. His childhood Christmases must have been warm.

It takes 30 minutes to go from Uptown, with it’s mansions and it’s little high-end boutique shops, all the way downtown, past the hotels and rows and rows of bars and t-shirt shops in the French Quarter, over the train tracks, down to a little spot just north of the Mississippi River called the Bywater.

Nothing here is entirely new to Marcus, who’d been in and out since he was in his twenties. Demons seemed to particularly love this city, would nestle up inside it, feeding on it’s rotting beauty and it’s stark poverty, loving to profane a place that still celebrated Saints Feast Days with proper feasts, and threw parades to honor Joan of Arc. Everything from the Quarter westward seemed to be a little older, a little dirtier, a little less worse for wear. Mansions and hotels fade into little shotgun houses, some of them painted deep rich purples, bright yellows and oranges. It’s gotten much…”hipper” since Marcus had last swept through. This used to be one of the neighborhoods where the cabs wouldn’t stop. He still doesn’t see a grocery store in sight, but he does catch about five places to get an overpriced cup of coffee.

The potholes, however, are still the same, and just in one stretch of road, they must have hit about twenty. Around pothole #5, Tomas wakes up. Around pothole #43, he gives up on being tough.

He tries to muffle the pain with a hand wrapped around his mouth, groaning in pain like he’s been punched in the gut and  _ immediately _ removing his seatbelt, which had done its job and tightened around his chest when he reeled forward. Marcus gives him a passing glance, and continues down the road, biting on a bit of his chapped lip until he feels it bleeding.

“You could have just woken me up.” he says, with some sort of half-assed smile, as to suggest that he is both  _ fine _ and  _ just kidding _ and Marcus contemplates just leaving him on the side of the road right then and there. (Although, he can’t blame him. That one nearly swallowed the truck whole.)

“We’re nearly there,” Marcus mumbles, ignoring Tomas, who glances at him from the passenger seat, trying to gauge his expression. He’s never been great at awkward silences, and even in this weakened state, he can’t seem to be able to live with the concept that Marcus might be  _ cross  _ with him.

“Marcus…” he sighs, leaning back against the window. His complexion matches the pale grey sky and his eyes burn like cinders, set in the hollows rung around them. 

“ _ What. _ ”

_ You don’t get to do this _ , he thinks.  _ You don’t get to look at me with those eyes and pretend that none of this is happening.  _ It’s a problem, the way Tomas looks at him sometimes, like Marcus is the beginning and the end, the thread connecting him to his Maker. Marcus shouldn’t abide it and he certainly shouldn’t  _ like _ it, the way Tomas looks at him after a successful exorcism, like  _ he’s _ the one who’s created heaven and earth. It couldn’t possibly stay that way, and he knows it.

Tomas just shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Nope.

“It’s not  _ nothing _ , Tomas.” he says, voice pitched low and hoarse. He’s so tired he could just about die. “You won’t talk about it? I will-” he says, gritting his teeth and he grinds the brakes to a near-stop, easing them over another  _ canyon _ in the road, pretending he doesn’t see Tomas squirming and gripping the seat in genuine agony. “Never seen a man walk away from a seizure that quick.”

“It wasn’t a seizure.” he says, and it just  _ barely _ softens the situation, when Marcus can hear that their weariness is mutual.

“You went stiff as a board, your eyes rolled back in your skull-” His skin crawls just thinking about it. “...You made me smuggle you out of there like a bloody fugitive.” He mutters, the true insult to the injury. It seems like a testament to how  _ stupid _ one could get when sleep deprived.

“Pain pills make me sick.” Tomas says delicately, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I can’t remember the last time I had to take them, so I took a risk.” Glancing at Marcus, his face reveals a desperation to be believed. “A very stupid one.” he concedes, shoulders shrugging up defensively towards his ears, like a teenager being prodded about being out past his curfew. “It didn’t seem worth more tests and needles and scans.”

_ Says who _ , Marcus thinks, thinking about Tomas’ white, empty eyes, his death rattle gasp, the way he radiated heat like a furnace. He’s not sure if he can do this, not sure he can stomach being lied to, hovering over Tomas and waiting for him to crumble and falter, to fake wellness right up until the point where Marcus can’t pull him back.

(He will, he reminds himself a second later. If Tomas refused to take care of himself, Marcus would step up to do so, out of sheer spite. He doesn’t get to die without Marcus’s permission.)

Finally, the address lines up with the one Marcus had scribbled onto the corner of a paper towel, a double shotgun off the corners of Dauphine and Desire. (Marvelous street names here, he had to admit.) He pulls into the open street spot, and they finally, at last, come to a stop.

The house in question is painted the color of ripe limes, with teal shutters and pale orange columns framing the porch. Citrus trees poke out from behind a high wooden fence, and there’s a modest but lovely garden in the front. A tiny bit of iron gating hides the path to the backyard, where Marcus suspects there must be something equally pleasurable. Unlit Christmas lights line the outside framing, the fat old vintage ones that were painted from the inside. It’s easily the nicest accommodations they’ve been able to scrounge up since leaving the confines of Tomas’ apartment.

Winter in the Nigh-Sub-Tropics is a fickle thing, something of which Marcus is reminded as he steps down out of the cab and zips his jacket up to his neck. The air around them is cold and damp, fog just beginning to evaporate over the street as the sun makes an occasional appearance. The horizon is low, and wide, almost oppressive, dark clouds hanging heavy with rain.  There’s something in the air, woven in with in the humidity, sulfur and river water, night jasmine and dirt and a faint burnt smell from the coffee roasting plant nearby. It does something to your head, being below sea level. When you haven’t slept more than two hours in five days, everything starts to feel like a dream.

“It’s beautiful.” He hears Tomas’ soft voice behind him. He’s opened the door on his side, one ankle dangling loosely, like he’s thinking about getting out, but knows how much it’s going to hurt. His features soften. They just need sleep, he tells himself. Real sleep, in a bed, uninterrupted. Marcus removes their bags from the back, and then extends an arm out for him, trying to take on a least a bit of his weight as he stepped down. Even when he’s steady on his feet, Marcus keeps an arm around his shoulders.

“Bit much for me.” Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he wore a color brighter than faded denim. Put him in a red shirt, he might just explode into a cloud of dust. Tomas rolls his eyes, still eyeing the shotgun with a distant fondness. “They don’t do ‘em like that in Chicago, though, do they?” he says, indulging his partner’s quiet wonder.

“No,” Tomas says, hoarse but warm. “Put a bathtub Madonna on the lawn, this would have been my abuela’s dream house.”

A faint smile rises on Marcus’s lips. “No great white mansion, then?” Tomas just shrugs, still taking in all the little details.

“She’d say it was too much empty space.” Glancing at Marcus, he swallows back something bitter. “It was always just me and her, anyway.”

It’s too easy, in that moment, to imagine Tomas as a lonely little boy, shipped off as a casualty of an ugly divorce. He doesn’t talk about it much, and Marcus wonders if Tomas thinks that he somehow wouldn’t care, would be dismissive when it compared with the black hole of his own childhood. Tomas seems to have almost packed it away, but not quite deep enough where it can’t be found.

“Well, it’s ours til New Years.” he says, relinquishing Tomas to grab their bags. Tomas blinks in surprise. It seems unimaginable right now, that kind of rest.

“What if Bennett finds another case?” he asks, hesitantly. Marcus pulls a key from where it’s been stowed under the mat. It’s clumsy in his left hand and then the lock doesn’t click the first time, he has to stop himself from all but kicking the door down.

Glancing back, he takes one look at this half-dead, half-awake man, who leans against the railing to keep himself upright, and is broken inside more than literally. “Let me worry about that.”

“Marcus…” Normally, he wouldn’t withstand Tomas chiding him like a school teacher, but his voice is so soft, so weary and uncertain, he lets it go. 

“I used to hate it,” he starts, finally feeling the key turn the deadbolt with ease. “I’d break my leg, get a concussion, get hit with...pneumonia, malaria...some awful thing, and I’d feel useless. Knowing there were other cases out there, that I wasn’t doing my part.” He steps in to the darkened threshold of the house, setting down bags as he does.

Not taking his time to look around, he goes back for Tomas, stepping back down the stairs. He carefully loops his arm underneath Tomas’ frame, careful not to touch his injured side. Slowly, they make their way up the few stairs, and Marcus takes on more of his weight with each step. Tomas doesn’t have much left in him.

“Bit like a drug though, isn’t it? That chase. One success after another...one more demon gone...you live off that feeling. When you can’t have it, you’re sick for it.”

The house, already warming in the daylight, is lovely. Soft couches and well-loved furniture, antiques, and perhaps the most beautiful, modern kitchen he’s ever laid eyes on. Not that he’d have the faintest idea what to really do with it. Looking back, he doubts Tomas has made any judgment on the decor. He can’t seem to find much focus at all. Sighing, Marcus reaches out, tilting his chin back up towards him before resting his hand on the back of his neck. He’s still too warm for comfort.

“We’re men, Tomas. Just men. And sometimes God reminds us of that with real, proper inconvenience.”

He watches Tomas consider this for a moment, and he seems to let it settle, even though he hates it, he can truly tell. And finally, he nods. Marcus nods back, with a sympathetic smile, and leads him off in the direction of the nearest bed.


	5. although it's been said, many times, many ways

It takes some thought, a lot of shifting and readjusting, and at one point Tomas all but begs Marcus to leave him in peace to find his own comfortable position (or lie face down and smother himself to death, whatever came first). Eventually Marcus leaves him as was prescribed, somewhat upright, on his back surrounded by an absurd amount of pillows, looking wan and exhausted like some not-long-for-this-world heroine from an old romance movie.

He promises to stay nearby, but Tomas shoos him away.

“You haven’t slept in days,” he murmurs, half-asleep already, his head tipped to the side, cheek and hair pressed against the pillow beneath him. Honestly, Marcus would stay just for the pleasure of the visual alone. He’s a damn vision when he sleeps.

“It’s fine,” Marcus waves him off. “Haven’t even started hallucinating yet.” He grins. Tomas does not grin back.

“Well then, you can’t come back in this room until you’ve showered.” Marcus scoffs and smells the ribbed black shirt he’s wearing, and doesn’t dare to attempt to remember the time and date of his last proper wash. His face says “right, fair enough” but his mouth says “Rude.”

 _That_ makes Tomas smile, a playful little ghost on his pale lips, and Marcus rolls his eyes and shakes his head. It shouldn’t feel so natural, the way he reaches out, smoothing the hair away from Tomas’ forehead. His hands are cold from handling an icepack now ace-bandaged to the man’s side, and Tomas presses back like a cat. “A man _exerts_ himself carrying you around. I think you lift cinder blocks when I’m not looking.”

It takes a minute to realize his fingers are still threaded through Tomas’ hair. He carefully extracts his hand and crosses his arms tightly against his chest.

“Go to sleep, Marcus.” At the very least, he’s still smiling.

\----------------

Marcus does not sleep, at least not immediately. Instead he wanders through the corridors of the house like some sort of ghost. Shotguns are odd things, they stretch back in one long hallway, living room usually smashed into the front, while the kitchen always lingered in the very back, and any other room was tucked off to each side, concealed by doors. He’s given Tomas the private bedroom. The only bedroom really, although there’s some note in a very detailed guestbook about a bedroll tucked in some linen closet. The bed’s big enough for 2.5 people at least, and they’ve shared enough to lack propriety, and if one of them weren’t in need of real, uninterrupted rest, they’d both be sprawled out, unbothered like stray dogs in a spot of sun.

Marcus knows better than to press too hard, but he does wonder where Bennett finds such things.

 _A friend of mine who owed me a favor_. That was all he’d revealed.

Marcus passes an ornate ceramic crucifix hanging against the wall, and there’s an elaborate alter in the study, a little Catholic, a little Pagan, saints and offerings and photos of loved ones all co-mingled together. He keeps finding strange beauty in the pockets of this tastefully decorated, almost painfully chic little place. Before this last case, they’d stayed in an absolute dive called the Braidwood Inn, and usually Marcus wasn’t one to complain, but he’d been genuinely afraid to touch much of anything without protective gear and maybe holy water for good measure.

It’s clean and lovely, and he hates that it took Tomas getting the life beat out of him to have it fall into their laps.

Marcus stares long and hard at the antique clawfoot tub, before he realizes the temporary relief would be long overshadowed by the idea of marinating in a week’s worth of blood and sweat and filth. No, the shower will do fine. With Marcus’s luck, he’d fall asleep and drown himself, leaving Tomas with one hell of a Christmas present.

He strips bare, throwing caution to the wind and removing the velcro-strapped brace on his wrist, and examines his body in the full-length mirror next to the sink. This long burden of rapid-fire cases has been unkind, and it shows in skin stretched too thin over his ribcage, and newly healing cuts and bruises beginning to fade across the gnarled, pale skin. Even in this soft, warm light, which he’s _sure_ is meant to flatter, he looks like some subterranean creature. Fish-belly skin speckled with uncharming freckles. Sun-starved. Jagged around every edge.

He used to tell himself that it was all just...some slipcover for something greater, and that his scars and imperfections were just more proof that he was one of the few men who could survive this life. It was a willing part of his uniform; The collar, the crucifix, the stole, and everything beneath it. He wonders if this is how Stockholm Syndrome victims feel. And he realizes he can’t bear to stare anymore.

The water is so hot, he may as well be boiling himself alive, pale skin going pink from the exposure. It runs black beneath his feet. He’s been given shower gel instead of bar soap, with some posh label that reads ‘white tea and ginger’. He works it over every filthy inch of him, scrubbing and then rinsing and then scrubbing again with some fearful need to be _very_ clean if he’s to stay in this house.

He lingers, long enough for his fingers to prune, realizing this is the first time in ages that Tomas isn’t patiently waiting on the other side of the door, praying Marcus left him enough hot water to properly wash his hair. He could let everything go cold as ice around him and it wouldn’t matter.

The mind wanders, and the steam on the back of his neck is beginning to feel like someone breathing, close and damp against his skin. Marcus imagines strong hands slipping in from behind, one lovingly tracing through the pale hair that trailed down his navel towards his bony hips. His breath seems to trap itself in his throat, and he braces one hand against the white tile that surrounds him.

Of course, the hand is his own, and along with a familiar hot spike in the core of his stomach, there’s a reflexive bit of guilt as it slides down between his legs. The low hum in his throat reverberates around him for a moment, he feels seen. And judged. Lust is a sin, no matter how he tries to frame it. _Abusing their bodies before God_ , Father Sean would call it. _"If I catch you foolin' around again, Marcus, I will personally watch you starve, you hear me, boy?"_ Marcus supposed he would know all about abuse. Maybe it’s a poor use of his body, and a waste of God’s love, but when relief comes, spilling out over his hand, he remembers he’s not a priest anymore. And he can just go to confession and beg for forgiveness like the rest of the mortals.

 

\---------------------------------------------

He takes the couch, and dreams of crows.

They sit on the wires outside of the house and they sit on the lawn and they tap with their long black beaks on the window panes. The air is full of the faint fluttering of their wings, such a delicate sound made suddenly _loud_ by their sheer volume.

The sky is black with velvet wings and staring, beady eyes. They don’t call or cry, they just wait.

He finds himself in his old uniform, collared, a handgun tucked into the back of his pants, and his hands itch. The gun is begging to be used, but he doesn’t know why. He’s standing in the open doorway, staring into the darkness outside.

Tomas stands in the street, surrounded by birds in perfect concentric circles. His lips are moving without as much as a sound. Marcus tries to call to him, but his voice is lost beneath the rustling of feathers.

His eyes are white. Marcus has the gun in his hand. And he knows the birds have come to devour whatever is left behind.

\-------------

Tomas’ coughing rings out from the back of the house like a gunshot. Marcus wakes up with his mouth open with a gasp that never quite comes and he’s left with a horrible case of cotton mouth and sweat beading up against his temple like morning dew. His sweatpants (well, actually, they are Tomas’ sweatpants, lovingly borrowed without asking) are bunched around his knees and twisted around his waist. There’s a stripe of blood on the pillow he’d been using, one of those butterfly strips rendered useless as it dangles limply, held on by one last inch of adhesive.

“Fuck me,” he breathes into the air, at nothing, to no one.

He follows the sound, passing the now-empty bedroom, where the sheets and blankets are spilled out onto the floor. It’s nearly dark outside now, slivers of blue and pink light just barely visible through the windows as he passes. They’ve slept the day away, and frankly, Marcus could have rolled over and put in another solid eight hours unmedicated, were it in the cards.

Tomas is in the kitchen, bent over the sink, shoulders shaking with harsh inhales. He’s left the fridge open, bathed in the yellow light. Marcus can see every last bruise, every last point of impact as he approaches. His coughs are wet and wracking, and Marcus isn’t shocked when he braces against the sink, throwing up a lungful of bile and fluid. His own stomach turns. He should have looked after him better.

“It sounds like a production of _La Boheme_ in here.” he says, turning on the overhead light. Tomas’ shoulders shrink for a moment, as if the sensory overload were too much but seems to steady after a moment or two, rinsing out his mouth and wiping his face with a damp paper towel.

“I’m fine.” he rasps.

“I’m not asking you to be,” Marcus shrugs and peruses the open fridge. Surprisingly, it’s not empty, there’s a decent arrangement of groceries, fruits and vegetables, a gallon of milk and two different kinds of liquid coffee creamer. He can only imagine what the pantry might yield. On the counter, there’s a bottle of red wine, with an opener, and some sort of handwritten note. More than likely a welcome gift that they’d missed while they licked their wounds. Marcus doesn’t know Bennett’s friends, never figured him for the _friend_ type anyway, but they were proving increasingly benevolent.

Tomas doesn’t look any better, and even though Marcus somehow knew he wouldn’t, it’s a wounding sight. He realizes it’s something he’s come to rely on, not just his beauty, which was always a steady constant no matter how sick he got, but his relative invulnerability. Tomas is young, and strong, and that somehow reassures Marcus on the most difficult of nights. Here, the illusion falls apart as Tomas washes his own stomach acid down the sink. He’s breathing in little shallow gasps instead of the deeper, strained breaths he’d been taking while asleep. Marcus steps in and shakes his head, placing his hand on his bare chest. He can feel his heart pounding.

“You can’t breathe like that, love,” he murmurs. “If you keep going like that, your lungs will fill with fluid.” Tomas looks up at him, and his bloodshot eyes are so wide, so tired, he looks like he’s about to beg Marcus to put him out of his misery. “Trust me, you’ll be sick out your mind. It’s a one way trip back to the hospital.” Shifting behind Tomas, Marcus places his hand delicately against his chest.

“Focus on making my hand move.” Tomas shakes his head, leaning back so his hair is pressed against Marcus’s chin.

“It hurts.”

He hesitates for a moment, before his free arm rises, wrapping against Tomas’ exposed collarbone. “I’ve got you,” he promises. “ _Sé que duele, pero necesito que lo intentes._ ”

Tomas’ jaw clenches, and for a moment Marcus wonders if he’s going to wrest himself from this odd embrace. But he’s always been one to do as he’s told. He starts to work through a long, dragging breath, and Marcus’s hand moves with him, and keeps him upright as his breath falters, coughing up the pain. On the third try, Tomas whimpers and struggles against him, and it takes Marcus everything he has not to lean in and kiss his temple and promise to make sure nothing ever hurts this badly ever again.

“Where did you learn this?” Tomas’ gasps, stalling for his next try.

Marcus grins. “Ignored a busted rib on the job. Wound up in the care of some very cross nuns in Stuttgart.”

Eventually Marcus’s hand moves with a steady, if not weak regularity, and the contact is starting to feel like he’s slowly been engulfed, like the frog who doesn’t notice he’s been boiled alive. He pulls away, and presses at Tomas’ temple with the damp towel. “Back to bed, I think.” The look that crosses Tomas’ face can only, frankly, be described as pouting. He may be a worse invalid than Marcus.

Looking up at Marcus, Tomas blinks and sighs, reaching up with bruised knuckles, just barely touching the outline of the cut on his cheek. Marcus’s head twitches out of his reach and he turns back to the cabinets, filling up two glasses of water. “I know. Bit of a horror show, isn’t it?” he says, placing one of the cups in Tomas’ outstretched hand.

“It looks painful.” Tomas murmurs softly.

“You’re stalling.” Marcus says, glancing back at him. “At this rate, you’ll sleep through Christmas.”

“Don’t remind me.” Tomas huffs and brushes past him, back towards the bedroom. Marcus glances at the bottle of wine, proceeding to open it, ignoring the pain in his wrist as he wrests the cork from the neck of the bottle. He can’t tell if it’s a $9 or $100 bottle, but right now it doesn’t exactly matter. He grabs two more cups- plastic, stemless, completely inappropriate, and follows after him.

Marcus finds him sitting on the bed, arms braced on both sides of him, hanging his head. “I’m sorry.” he mumbles, not having to look up to sense his presence in the door. “I just wish I could take something.” With a sigh, Marcus steps inside and joins him, pouring a _healthy_ amount of wine into a cup and handing it to Tomas. “This is your solution?” he says, stitched eyebrow raised, and he figures that not even pain could get in the way of a good Tomas Ortega scolding.

“It’ll calm your nerves. I know how hard it is to lie still sometimes.”

This, at least, he seems to take at face value. Besides, it’s worth it to watch him take the first few sips and watch his face flush with a bit of color.

They settle quickly, Tomas curled up on his good side (Marcus knew he’d never be able to get used to sleeping on his back), Marcus lying flat, staring up at the ceiling. The bedroom is cool, and quiet, painted a lovely sea green with patterns etched into the white paint above them. His head is pleasantly buzzing, and Tomas is nearly asleep, but fighting it.

“When were you in Stuttgart?” Tomas asks, both eyes closed, his forehead pressed against the side of Marcus’s upper arm. He hums, trying to flip through his mental index of cases, and it’s no treat to him to have to reach so far back into the past.

“I think I was 23...maybe 24.”

Tomas doesn’t move, but nuzzles his head against Marcus in what might be some sort of drunk, sick solidarity.

“I’m sorry.” he murmurs. Marcus’s chest tightens uncomfortably. He’s never _loved_ the idea that Tomas quietly pities him for the ugly parts of the life he’s lived.

“Why do you keep apologizing?” he asks back, throat dry.

“Because they didn’t take care of you. Not like this”  It takes a moment to realize his hand has slid back into Tomas’ thick, curly hair. He’s stopped shaving over the past month or so, and it makes him look older, more experienced, but it hasn’t put a dent in his vulnerability. No, Tomas will always look like this, he thinks. This trusting, wounded boy, pressed against him as a willing anchor. Marcus almost thinks he’s asleep, moving to turn off the light, when Tomas reaches out, his warm hand touching Marcus’s stomach.

“Will you stay?”

He’s not sure if Tomas knows what he’s asking. He’ll worry about it tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone had a good holiday! i got a bit waylaid by family and illness so i hope everyone is still in the mood for this


	6. adeste fideles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys discuss Christmas Mass, angels, gas station fried chicken.

Tomas has always had a particular love of the saints.

He supposed that any attentive Catholic child might, their stories were always rife with compelling imagery; St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, Joan of Arc, the teenage soldier, astride a white horse with her banner and sword, and naturally, a good gory ending was an easy shortcut to holding the younger ones’ short attention spans. His abuelita acquired saints’ prayer cards and medallions with the passion of a lifelong baseball card collector, and could tell you who they were, why they were canonized, and when you should pray to them. They take up so much of his memory. He can’t remember their old street address, of their little apartment, but he does remember that St. Stanislaus Kostka is the Patron Saint of broken bones.

Tomas could pray to St. Raphael the Archangel for the unending pain in his ribs. He could pray to St. Therese de Lisieux for guidance. He could pray to St. Dymphna for Marcus, who prowls anxiously about this strange little  house like a stray caught indoors for the first time, caught between his need to hover over Tomas like he hovers over possessed and suffering children and finally submit to some rest of his own.

Tomas doesn’t know if there’s a Patron Saint of Losing One’s Mind.

There must be, he thinks. But for once, he can’t remember.

Another day passes as a non-event. His attempts to get out of bed are futile and painful, and he and Marcus are incompatible this way, because Marcus must always be moving, one way or the other. It’s all fair, he supposes. He’s not much to look at, a bruised-up heap of a man, who can barely move without yelping and coughing up his lungs.

While he sleeps in the late afternoon, Marcus disappears (Tomas doesn’t know _how_ he knows, it’s as if he can track Marcus’s long, stalking steps in his dreams, his manic energy). When Tomas wakes up and limps into the living room, it’s dark and he has reappeared with a bag of fried chicken and a strange concoction in a styrofoam cup, which he places in Tomas’ hands. It’s a sort of soup, bits of beef spare rib with scallions, deviled egg, spaghetti noodles.

“Delightful woman at the counter said it was a hangover killer.”

Tomas frowns, poking through the soup with a fork. “I’m not hungover.”

“You’ve thrown up twice today.”  Tomas looks away, knowing he can’t argue with that. The coughing trips his gag reflex. Even in this house, with unexpected privacy, he can’t hide anything from Marcus.

Strangely enough, one would think they’d take the chance to not breathe the same air for a moment, pretend they aren’t tethered together (by God, by something else, Tomas is too tired to consider it today.) But they seem to keep huddling together in different rooms. Tomas slumps over the kitchen table, scrambled eggs half-eaten, while Marcus has profanity-laced conversations with the complicated, overly-fussy coffee maker. Marcus gently dabs antibiotic over his split eyebrow after Tomas finally manages a shower in the too-bright white bathroom.

He woke clinging to Marcus, hand resting against his jaw, and for a few minutes, his surprise overwhelmed his pain.

Marcus sighs, picking the white meat off of a chicken breast with his fingers with strange, methodical delicacy, setting it aside without eating it, which reminds Tomas, once again, that he has lived so much of his life completely unobserved. “You need the protein. You need to _eat._ ” he says, with ridiculous gravity as he continues to pick apart his meal like a carrion bird. Marcus starts with the fried brown chicken skin, a trait that he shares with Luis, and it makes Tomas smile behind his bottle of water.  

“Doctor at the hospital said we’re more or less in the same physical shape as kidnapping victims, so…” Marcus says, with a guilty shrug. He glances up once, looks over Marcus. Tomas, in his self-pity over being laid up, has not taken enough time, he knows, to make sure his partner was in one relative piece. Not that Marcus will let him, bats his hand away like one swats a fly when Tomas tries to look at the scratches on his chest, flinches away like an abused junkyard dog when his hands get too near the gash on his cheek. It’s useless, reminding Marcus that he’s been hurt, too. He doesn’t seem to think of his body as his own. There is basic maintenance, and nothing else. Comfort would be indulgent. Finger-shaped bruises are starting to bloom on his neck, and Tomas wishes Marcus would let him drape a warm washcloth over the pale, tender skin. Would stop moving. Would shut up for a second.

(Demons seem to love grabbing Marcus by the throat, as if envious of it’s long, graceful line, determined to crush a beautiful thing when they see it.)

“So obviously you picked the healthiest meal you could find.” he teases softly. This odd soup is delicious, warm and salty with little bits of deviled egg yolk dissolving in the broth, co-mingling with scallions, and it lights up the battered pleasure centers in his brain. Finally, Marcus smiles, lips shining and greasy, and Tomas isn’t quite sure he’s ever seen him so pleased.

_Wrong, he thinks. The bar. After Casey. He leaned against the bar, trying to find space for his long arms, two beers in him, self-conscious in his happiness, he kept running his hands through his short-cropped hair-_

“I’m on holiday. Even God would not deny me the pleasure of gas station fried chicken." Marcus says, kicking his sock feet up onto the coffee table. “We’ll start eating healthy in the new year.” he says, tearing his teeth into a drumstick. “Isn’t that what you Americans are big on? Resolutions and all.”

Tomas shrugs, stabbing into a piece of beef. It dissolves in his mouth with perfectly cooked tenderness. Thank you, Marcus. In truth, Tomas knows he should never poke at Marcus for eating. He’s been witness to enough soup kitchen scenes to recognize someone who eats like they never know where their next meal might come from. Coming off of three weeks of toil, he seems downright waifish, sharp cheekbones and spindly legs. He must have the metabolism of a wolverine. Marcus will make sure Tomas has a full meal while he spends $1.50 on terrible coffee. He thinks Tomas doesn’t notice.

“Yes,” he starts, drinking the soup broth from his cup like hot tea. “But we don’t tend to keep them. St. Anthony’s always had _very_ strong attendance in January. By early February, it’d be the same handfuls until Easter Sunday.” Marcus nods, digging about his pile of plastic bags and chicken boxes for a napkin.

“I’d forgive them,” he says, making sure chicken bones are properly discarded. “February in Chicago. S’like what Dante envisioned when he said the innermost level of Hell was frozen over.” From beneath his knees, Marcus produces a six-pack of beer, Miller Lite from the looks of it, sweaty cans kept together in their plastic loops. He pulls one off, wincing at the pain in his splinted wrist, and offers it to Tomas first. He politely waves ‘no’, and Marcus almost looks a little disappointed before opening his own.

“Then again,” he says hoarsely, nose wrinkling as he takes a sip. Marcus hates cheap domestic beer but never allows himself to try something better. “I’ve never had a congregation. So.” Tomas nods. No, he thinks. The Church never let you have one. They dangled belonging in front of your nose for 40 years, and discarded you when you needed them most. He tries not to think about it. If he pities Marcus, the demons will sense it, and Marcus will want nothing to do with him.

He feels Marcus’s gaze on him from across the table, and he looks up, meeting two eyes, one white one red. “Do you miss it?” he asks, quiet and sincere, but intense. Always intense.

Does he miss St. Anthony’s?

“Yes.” he answers honestly, because it’s no use lying to Marcus. Marcus does not flinch or look away, and if this hurts him, Tomas can’t tell. He merely cocks his head to the side as he does, and Tomas wonders if he’ll ever be able to stop thinking of this man as a curious cat.

“At least...right now, I do.” he sets the styrofoam cup down, leaning back into the couch, and his shifting immediately makes him feel like his ribs are driving straight into his lungs, over and over, with each proceeding cough. His knees drive up against his chest and he sees Marcus stand, concerned and he’s just aware enough to flap a hand in his direction to indicate he needs no help. The conversation stops, while Tomas teaches himself how to breathe for the hundredth time, and Marcus disappears, not a fan of watching him struggle like this, and reappears a moment or so later, when his palm drifts in front of Tomas’ eyes. There’s a handful of pills.

Tomas shakes his head. “No-” he wheezes and feels a cool hand press against his cheek, calming him immediately.

“It’s just ibuprofen. Anything's better than nothing, Tomas.” It’s too many pills, they both know, a technical overdose waiting to happen, and after a minute, he accepts them, tossing them into his mouth like skittles, grateful when water is pressed into his hand later. Marcus nods, stroking his bruised knuckles against Tomas’ brow, a touch so soft and undeserved, for a moment, Tomas wonders if he might just cry. It’s just a reminder of his lie, one he thought he was paying for by living with this unbridled pain.

A quick lie in a car. Tomas has no problem with painkillers. They do not make him sick, and they _certainly_ don’t make him hallucinate. Anything to keep him out of the hospital another day, _anything_ to make Marcus believe he was of sound mind even if he had a broken body.

How does he tell Marcus that God has grabbed him in a tight fist, striking terrible visions through his brain in lightning hot streaks-

(How does he tell Marcus he’s losing his mind?)

He can’t. He won’t. Marcus will send him away if he does. Even worse, Marcus will be kind about it. _“People aren’t meant to see things like this,”_ he’d said, so weary, during their last case, after they’d found unholy writ carved into Antoine’s flesh, even with the boy’s hands tied above him. No shame in quitting, he’ll say. Back to your beloved congregation. Marcus will wash his hands of him, eager to keep loss and failure off his resume-

But right now, he just looks so _worried_. Long fingers drift against his skin, against his cheek, his neck, and finally, Marcus presses the back of his hand to his forehead, eyes flickering with pained recognition. “This is all wrong, you're burning up. Why didn’t you say something?”

Because it’s not natural, Tomas thinks. Because it feels like a thousand pins and needles beneath my skin and hot coals inside my skull, like there’s someone watching my every move, like God is sending something to swallow me whole. God doesn’t know if he hates his prophets or loves them, Marcus, you know this-

“I’m broken inside. That’s what the body does. It’s trying to fix itself.” he responds, feeling downright silver-tongued. He looks up at Marcus and tries to smile. “I’m fine. I run warm. Finish eating.”

Marcus’s eyes go cold for a minute, and Tomas can’t help but shiver. He knows Marcus doesn’t quite believe him. But the moment passes. Marcus is tired, too and strokes his cheek forgivingly. It’s kind, and soothing, even if Marcus’s hands smell like fried chicken. “The pills’ll help, then.”

And just like that, Marcus is down again, food forgotten, sitting cross-legged at the apex of the fancy, L-shaped couch, where Tomas’ prone form is stretched down one side. He finishes his beer. Starts another. Marcus usually only drinks to celebrate, to blow off steam, but this seems almost medicinal, like his anxious chain-smoking on the road. Something that will keep him still.

“St. Anthony’s-” he prompts. Oh. Right. Tomas sighs, breath wheezing through his chest.

“I know it’s a cliche, how many people only show up for Christmas Eve Mass, but it’s... _it was,_ ” he self-corrects, “...I don’t know. Special. One of those nights we all want to think we’re at our best. Maybe we are.” Marcus nods. “I’d work on my sermons for weeks, always, right after Thanksgiving. It never compared, though, when my lectors would read the scripture.”

Marcus smiles, but it’s frail and telling. “Always something that captivated my young imagination. An angel appears to ordinary men, going about their business. Says “fear not.” he says softly. Tomas wonders about a little Marcus Keane, who must have been waiting for this angel every day. Just one sign. _Fear not. I bring you tidings of great joy._

“We should go.” Tomas suggests. “There’s a church just down the street, I can hear the bells in the morning.” He sees Marcus’s shoulders hunch as he sits forward, bending the tab back on his can until it pops off. Nervous hands. Give Marcus a beer bottle, and he’ll peel every inch of the label, sometimes all in one like an apple.

“St. Lawrence. Passed it on the way. Pretty old place.” he says with a shrug. St. Lawrence, who was roasted on a gridiron over hot coals by the Romans, and marked his death with a taunt. _“Turn me over. I’m well done.”_  Patron saint of cooks and comedians. Maybe the only good joke the Church has never told.

Tomas smells hesitation all over Marcus. He’s been cagey about going to mass, or even going into churches unless he must, to consult with priests about the possible possessed. They’ve tried, and it pained him to see Marcus like that, who can walk so tall and proud, be so fierce in an an exorcism chamber, looking so small, when everyone rises to take communion and Marcus sits behind, shame visible in every inch of him.

“Yeah. Maybe.” he finally says, and Tomas knows he shouldn’t fight it, shouldn’t pick a scab on Marcus’s behalf.

“...It’s Christmas Eve, Marcus.” he says quietly and Marcus crumples the can in his fist. “It’s an important day. A holy day.”

“ _Yes_ , Father Tomas.” he says with a sharpness that suggests that Tomas should drop it. Before Tomas can say anything else, Marcus reaches for the remote on the coffee table and switches on the flat-screen TV in front of them. The following silence isn’t... _un_ companionable but it’s not comfortable either. Tomas lays back, fully settling, head propped up against the cushions. After a minute, he reaches out and makes a claw-like grabby gesture. Marcus glances over, and smiles, despite himself, wresting a can free and handing it to him.

“Shouldn’t mix pills and beer.”

Tomas sighs, pressing the can against his forehead. “I know.”

The stations flip by mindlessly, but lingers when they both realize they’ve caught the very beginning of _It’s a Wonderful Life._ Marcus blinks, wondering if he should set the remote down.

“I’ve never actually seen this before.” he says quietly. Glancing over, Tomas nods in approval.

“It’s good.”

They settle back. Marcus notes more than once that Mary is a saint, that George Bailey is “handsome, in a neurotic sort of way.” (Marcus notes he was always more of a “Cary Grant man”, which doesn’t surprise Tomas in the slightest.)

When aired with commercials, the movie is nearly four hours long and Tomas finds himself drifting in and out, waking to see Marcus wholly engaged. It’s rare to see him so still. The last time he dozes off, he wakes to feel Marcus’s hand resting on his ankle, thumb idly stroking the skin. It’s the end, and the citizens of Bedford Falls are pouring money into a basket in front of a weeping Donna Reed and a joyous Jimmy Stewart, while singing “Auld Lang Syne.” The camera lingers on a shot of the book the strange angel, Clarence, gives to George-

 _“_ _Dear George, remember_ _no_ _man is a failure who has_ _friends_ _. Thanks for the wings, Love Clarence."_

Tomas glances up, sees that Marcus’s face is wet and shining with tears of his own. Tomas wonders if he should say something. Do something. Wonders if this is just another reminder of the Angel that never came. It seems God has never been so comforting with Marcus, cracked his being in half when he was a boy, and rattled about in his head, in and out, like a radio losing and gaining frequency. God is there, yes, but does he help Marcus? Does he tell him he’s loved? He uses Marcus to channel those words to others- _Son of the morning, ashes on the earth, Fallen Angel-_ but does he ever get to hear it for himself?

But maybe it’s just a happy ending. If Tomas were more awake, he’d be crying too. George Bailey is being rewarded the way he’d wished his parishioners would be rewarded, for all their pain and toil and hard-won faith. That’s why Christmas Eve Mass had seemed so special. It was a warm and joyous night, where everyone congregated to celebrate the birth and dawning of the world’s redemption. They deserved Christmas.

Marcus deserves it too, he thinks. Deserves to feel like he belongs, to feel alive with the mystery of that sacred night. Tomas would like to see him that way, bathed in the warm light of altar candles, surrounded by the festive golds and reds and greens. He would have liked even more to bring him to Olivia’s for dinner, where friends and distant relatives gathered in droves. He could have plied Marcus with mezcal and more food than he’d know what to do with. Luis would _love_ him, because all children love Marcus, they recognize him as someone who is spiritually and eternally on their side. Olivia would love him too, would find an ally in her sororal teasing and worrying. _You could belong. You do belong, even if the Church told you otherwise._

And now Tomas is tearing up, too, despite himself. He opened up Pandora’s Box, thinking of home. The nagging sense of loss feels like a gaping void. He chokes back his emotions, if only because to cry will _physically_ hurt more than anything else, looking up again at Marcus, who wipes at his face, unaware that Tomas has already seen him. Marcus turns, and Tomas closes his eyes again, feeling a bit like a child trying to pretend. A gentle hand strokes sweat-matted hair from his forehead, checking his temperature again.

“Still with me?” Marcus murmurs, closer now than he was before. Tomas replies with a non-committal “mmmm”, pressing against his hand. His eyes drift back open and he looks up at Marcus, whose eyes are still watery, damp blonde lashes clumped together, and Tomas can’t help but smile at him. God has tethered them together, and it shows in the ways they pull apart and reconnect. Always a soft touch, never an argument they can’t overcome.

Not yet, at least.

Marcus smiles back. “Go on to bed, if you’d like. No need to keep me company.” Tomas just shakes his head, pleased when Marcus’s hand settles over his heart.

“I’m comfortable here.”

For once, Marcus doesn’t argue, and Tomas is relieved- he feels safer here, with Marcus watching over him, not isolated in that strange little bedroom that doesn’t belong to him. Even now, as he lets his weakness get the better of him, he can feel a skittering at the back of his head, like something is breathing down his neck and crawling across his skin. Marcus can’t stop this, he knows. But he knows a moment will come, when Tomas will have to prove to him that he’s not sick, and he’s not crazy. He will have to prove that he was visited, there in that hospital room, struck, unseeing, with feelings and images he can’t explain. A woman screaming, burning and blistered skin, the endless chiming of church bells.

And crows. So many crows.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S CHRISTMAS IN APRIL, GUYS, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT
> 
> (sorry to anyone who was waiting on an update, the combination of depression, a full-time job, and good ol' procrastination was pretty lethal, but!!! i hope you enjoyed these soft christmas boys)
> 
> i am always on the tungls @gammarayed and twitter @sistermercury please come scream into the night with me
> 
> i'm already cooking up another chapter, so please yell until i deliver it, i thrive on the fear of shame 
> 
> fun facts:  
> 1.) the soup Tomas is eating is called yaka mein. It is a Miracle Food that solves all problems. Queen of Bounce Big Freedia talks about it here, and gives a recipe: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/02/25/yaka_meat_stew_recipe_big_freedia_explains_the_right_way_to_make_a_new_orleans.html  
> 2.) Both Marcus Keane and Cary Grant are/were enormous bisexuals so of course Marcus loves him.  
> 3.) New Orleans has a lot of great food, but gas station fried chicken remains it's unsung champion.


	7. if only in my dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small warning for mention of canonical self-harm

Sleep has always been hard-won for Marcus. Unless he is truly stretched to his limit, physically, spiritually, mentally, he will toss and turn, ready to be up and moving at a moment’s notice. One particularly rough night, they’d tried to share a double bed in some poor old woman’s spare attic room, much too tired and too greedy to lay on something soft to accept the reality of the mattress size. One bad dream later, Marcus had to apologize for elbowing Tomas square in the nose. They were lucky to hide the bloodied linens in the wash with the rest of the mess.

He’s not used to the luxury of sleeping in shifts, and it well and truly is a luxury. He calls it an “exorcist habit”, knowing Tomas might just take about any personality defect of his as a mere...byproduct. He wonders if these things horrify Tomas. A glimpse into his future, _this is what you have to look forward to,_ an open catalogue of scars and bad habits.

Or maybe he thinks he’ll be stronger. Better. Marcus supposes that’s the way all students think.

He’s not sure how to tell Tomas this might not be possible, that someday he may be as old and weary and ugly, his body barely held together with lean muscle and scar tissue, and he will not remember much of his tenure as Chicago’s Favorite Son. He will not remember his impulses, the ones Marcus told him to leave at the door, the ones that root you to the earth. That’s survival, he says, because once you let them go, they will no longer act as the knife a demon shoves between your ribs, over and over.

There are no golden boys in exorcism. Your success is the church’s dirty secret. (Albeit, one of the lesser ones.)

The sleep problem, though. That one’s actually a Boy’s Home tic. Always one eye open, lest one of the older boys wake in the night, hungry for blood.

The sun is rising, pink light settling on the backyard, and the fog carpeting the grass is beginning to dissipate. Can’t sketch, wrist won’t let him, but even now, he sits on the steps of the little wooden deck that led into hidden oasis, a pack of frozen peas wrapped around the useless appendage, staring up at the canopy of trees sheltering the lawn. He’d’ve liked to sketch the palm trees, their lazy lean and fat, glossy fronds. It would have made a change of pace from the twisting vines and bare branches that filled the pages of sketchbooks and across the thin margins of his bible.

The sunrise brings Christmas Eve. To wish it were another day seems wrong, blasphemous, cartoonishly dour. But it feels like he’s the driver in a slow-motion car crash, because he's truly scared that this will be a slow dawning for Tomas. The first time on this odyssey of sorts where his partner realizes what he has left behind, and that Marcus is no replacement. He says he understands. He has to understand.

Never mind the fact that he’s hiding something.

Marcus had woken in a heap, folded into himself like a crushed meditating Buddha, having fallen asleep watching some piss-poor adaptation of _A Christmas Carol_ , blinking into the darkness around him. The cushions trembled beneath his legs and he turned his head, watching Tomas frantically dig his heels in, twisting in his sleep like he was being held down. He raked his nails down the skin of his arms, and Marcus was never so glad of his habit of keeping his hands neat, lest he simply strip the skin raw. Dreams, maybe. Once they start, they don’t go away, no matter how you try. He wonders what Tomas dreams of, now that God (or someone else) had connected the thread between them. 

Marcus had gently pried his hands away, steadying him back into the couch, pulling up the blanket he’d kicked to the floor. It’s no wonder, dry heat pours off his skin like furnace. It’s palpable, radiating, but Tomas insists, and has insisted, that it’s no fever. Of course not, because that would require Tomas to admit that something’s gone wrong, that he's not well, but God help Marcus, (really, God help him, he asks, watching Tomas mumble and whimper in his sleep), he’s not sure what help might look like. A doctor? Confession? A plane ticket back to Chicago?

 _I didn’t break you, did I-_  He wants to ask, watching Tomas’ eyes flicker beneath the sunken purple skin of his eyelids. _Three months in my care. Should have told you I tend to lose my things. Used to get palm lashes for it._ It makes his skin crawl to think of it, the strike of a ruler against little hands. He flinched but never cried.

Somewhere along the way, Marcus had learned to give what he had to the younger boys, better off with those frail things who needed something to cling to. Christmas presents included. Not that they amounted to much, donated by church charities, always second-hand toys, you could tell by the wear and tear, by the smell. 150 boys, one gift each, handed out by some fat old codger, some imposter with a beer gut dressed as Father Christmas. A gift, maybe something sweet after dinner, and midnight mass, where Marcus had once contemplated why God would want to do something as stupid and reckless as entering the human condition, so powerless, like all the boys crammed into the church pews around him, fidgeting and tired.

His first Christmas in the home, seven-year-old Marcus had been given a stuffed rabbit, a shabby patchwork thing made of grey and white calico cloth with floppy ears and sad button eyes. It was something soft, and he clung to it in secret before it disappeared from its hiding place in his pillowcase. At the time, it seemed like an act of cruelty, some prank, too many unwanted things pitted against each other in a sad arena masquerading as a “home", and God, he'd cried, and they were cruel about that too. But soon it seemed like a blessing. He started giving the gifts away. Let someone else fight to keep some rich child’s trash.

It’s a sad and selfish temptation, to wonder if he should give Tomas back, return him damaged with no explanation and a pitiful apology. _I thought I deserved this_ , he’d say. _I thought I was ready. I’ll gladly take the lashing_.

Smoke curls above his head in thick ribbons, the spice-rack sweetness of his clove cigarette settling on his lips and tongue. The distant church bell rings, telling the sleeping city that it’s 5:30 and morning is inevitable, and the birds are starting to wake around him, calling to each other from across the lemon trees. The frozen peas are starting to thaw, leaving trails of condensation across his jeans. He’s used to this, the stillness between, but a strange anxiousness lingers, right beneath his skin. That’s the burden of holidays, he supposes, the burden of expectations, of course he should have known that Tomas, who grew up in the love and admiration of the church, would find today special. And why not? Why would some worship be in appropriate, some celebration be unearned or undeserved?

That’s the rotten root of it.

_Afraid I’ll spoil him, Bennett?_

He can’t make Tomas into the thing Sean made him, and not because God sent him the wrong materials. No, Tomas could very well be a prodigy with the right instruction. Tomas lives like a saint in the making, divine, taking slings and arrows with a gladness in his heart that chills Marcus to his core. He can’t teach Tomas to carve out those parts of himself, chip away identity until just God and the vessel remain, not because that would make Tomas a poorer exorcist because, well-

It’s a sin. A big one. Unavoidable, selfish, covetous, lustful, terrible- _please God, forgive me, you sent a man to me who yearns to discover the path you laid for him, and I want him all to myself. I don’t want to give this one away. Don’t let someone else take him while I’m not looking._

He can’t make Tomas into the thing Sean made him because even Sean couldn’t beat it all out of him, his most successful creation, the sharpest blade in his bastard collection. If he could hear Marcus’s thoughts, he’d make him kneel on pebbles, and go through all seven of the penitential psalms until the skin gave and bled and formed puddles on concrete floor. _Domine, ne in furore- O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor punish me in your wrath, Have pity on me, Lord, for I am weak; heal me, Lord, for my bones are shuddering-_

Sean had caught him doting on another boy, a slight little bird, another of the unwanted things that Sean had purchased in bulk, that Marcus had just wanted to keep alive in their sunless new home. He didn’t know there were words for that impulse, but Sean sure did. 

_Ya like the other boys, Marcus? You think God won’t smell that on you, you think he’ll give you his power and grace if the Devil’s got a hand on your throat-_

Over and over and over.

It left pockmarked scars on his knees, and gave him a keen knack for memorization, but also told Marcus that some things are unkillable. _Still alive, Sean, and if I was the best it wasn’t because of you. Talk to me about God again._

“Marcus?”

He turns, cigarette dangling from his lips to see Tomas hovering in the door. He looks half-asleep, curly hair wild with boyish cowlicks, and Marcus smiles on impulse. Before he can pull himself up, Tomas carefully limps out across the deck and settles himself at Marcus’s side, close enough that their knees bump, thigh-to-thigh, bare shoulders pressed together, sun-kissed olive skin against his odd spots and scar tissue. (Tomas has never asked about the tattoo, the spiraling hash marks that, when observed close, are clearly just stick-poke ink over old razor cuts. Marcus tells himself that he’ll give the truth if asked. The odds on that aren’t good.)

“You okay?” Tomas asks, looking over at Marcus with soft concern. Marcus nods, exhaling smoke through his nose, away from Tomas, lest he send the poor man into another prolonged coughing fit, and nods. There’s still a flush high on Tomas’ cheekbones, and his eyes are glassy and hazy with something other than fatigue. He can still hear that thing hissing through Antoine’s ruined mouth yet again- _God broke him and he’ll break you too_ \- fun with pronouns, Marcus had thought for sure the demon had meant that God would use and abandon Tomas,  _He_ not _he,_  but looking at his bruised face, feeling him shiver against Marcus’s thin frame, he wonders if he misread. For every thousand lies a demon tells, there are usually one or two truths.

“Could ask you the same.” he mumbles, turning the bag of peas, so whatever frozen bits were left inside rested against the fracture, which isn’t swollen anymore, save the lump where the bone had popped out and was slowly mending back, and there are bruises to match, like a strange wristwatch.

“I’ll ask again, then.” Tomas says, quiet but firm, and Marcus can tell Tomas is looking at him, searching his expression and he pretends to fascinate himself with the stray cat walking the length of the high fence, a skin-and-bones tabby missing most of it’s right ear and the tip of its tail. It hops onto the neighbor’s shed a moment later, out of sight, as if it had sensed Marcus’s gaze. He sighs and shrugs as his response, flicking ash onto his boot.

“You should call Olivia today.” he says quietly, and he feels Tomas press closer. Tomas nods, features tightening into a guilty mask. “I know. She’ll be busy tomorrow. She’s supposed to host our family this year, and we’d thought-” He stiffens slightly and closes his eyes for a moment, clearly remembering some small detail, pinching the bridge of his nose. “She doesn’t have a lot of space, so she’d wanted to use St. Anthony’s kitchen the day before.” Marcus nods, and reaches up to rub Tomas’ back.

“You know they would have bulldozed the place even if you’d chained yourself to the pulpit, right?” he says, and even though Tomas nods, the doubt clearly lingers, and Marcus pretends to be surprised when Tomas lays his head on Marcus’s shoulder, pressing close as if trying to burrow into his side. It’s a hard truth, and an unavoidable one. There is no more St. Anthony’s, no congregation, the promise of heading to St. Brigid’s, the golden downtown temple, would have long dissolved. Tomas followed Marcus’s steps and the world narrowed to a single spotlight on an empty stage. Only one way to walk, lest he be left in the darkness.

“I miss them, Marcus.” he says, painfully quiet. Marcus nods.

“I know.” he murmurs, trying to soothe. Tomas’ breath is warm against his skin, and he feels the fine hairs on his arm stand stiff.

“Do you think they’ll forgive me?”

 _Oh, Tomas_.

“‘Course they will, what are you on about-”

“I usually play referee- when Luis’ father stops by. He tries to play the good guy, but he just...doesn’t understand Luis, he never has, and it’s just...it’s _easier_ , on Olivia, when I can be there-” Tomas almost hides his face against Marcus’s neck, trying to make himself small and hide from judging eyes, and Marcus wonders if he’s ever loved him so much. But after a moment, it feels perverse. _You get off on it. Him needing you_ . But is Marcus  _anything_ when he’s not needed by someone? 

“Nothing to be done, love.” Marcus pulls him in tighter. “Stop kicking yourself. You’re already down”

But to no avail. “He walked out on them, and I hated him for it. I hated him and hate is a sin and so is hypocrisy-”

“Then forgive him.” he offers, quickly, feeling unsteady, as if Marcus had _ever_ been able to truly forgive anyone who had so deeply wronged him, but he can teach Tomas to be better than he was, by God, he can try. “Forgive him and forgive yourself and pray on it...that’s what today is about, right?”

Tomas picks his head up, not looking at Marcus, but not disagreeing with him either. Marcus shrugs, resisting the temptation to light up another cigarette, give his hands something to do, but he worries it would ruin the stillness, tell Tomas that he needed to be left alone.

“Always my takeaway, anyway. When you think about it. God entered the world as an infant, as...fragile as you can imagine, to a poor family from a nowhere town, where nothing could have come easy, and he spent...every moment up until his violent death in...abject love. For everyone. His enemies and persecutors included.” That was the lesson, he realizes, for those wounded little boys trying to find their way. Love, and forgive, even if that forgiveness gets you hurt, again and again.

Tomas nods. Seems to straighten a bit. He looks ahead at the lawn and garden ahead of them. In the distance, a train whistles. There's a faint horn, as boats pass along the river. Tomas smiles, even though it is a broken thing. “You would have made a good preacher, Marcus.” he says and Marcus feels something warm bloom in the pit of his stomach, despite his dismissive scoff and shrug (that doesn’t match the grin on his face.)

“Hardly.”

There seems to be a question on Tomas’ tongue, an expectancy in his body language, and Marcus is about to prod before-

“...When you saw God...I-I know you were just a boy…” Tomas turns to him, and his eyes are searching for Marcus’s face for answers. “How did you feel after?”

Well.

Marcus swallows the bittersweet taste at the back of his throat, and decides to go for that second cigarette after all, exhaling upward like an incense offering, as if to ask God if he’s still up there, if he minds Marcus giving away his trade secrets.

“I was sick to my stomach. My skin felt numb all over and I…” he shakes his head, tipping his index finger to the skin behind his ear. “Couldn’t hear. For what felt like hours...days maybe. Like a bomb had gone off. It was like there was this...light. Somewhere in my core, and it couldn’t be turned off, no matter how I tried, some days it seemed to _burn_ -” And that light had lasted years. It would sing through his body, and demons would run fleeing at his command.

The light is dim now, if it shines at all. He leaves that unspoken. Marcus is about to go on, suddenly remembering other strange things, trace sensations, how it feels to see the face of God, something not meant for most mortal eyes, but Tomas kisses him before he can go further.

He’s quick about it, pulls away before Marcus can truly understand what’s happened, and when their eyes meet, Tomas looks surprised with himself, and a little afraid. The cigarette turns to ash in his fingers.

“I’m sorry-” Tomas exhales and Marcus wonders if it didn’t hurt so much to move quickly, he’d already be up, back in the house, ready to forget it ever happened. Marcus knows he’s blinking almost owlishly, is useless, shocked almost dumb.

“Why?” he asks, like a fool, as if Tomas would actually tell him that he regrets it. It’d be the lesser of two hurts, to be let down with kindness and warmth. Of course, Tomas is never quite as radiant as when he’s wrapped up in guilt, so human. Tangible, and flawed and sent to Marcus with all his beauty, and it’s no surprise, this time, when Tomas does not answer and kisses him a second time, and doesn’t pull away.

**Author's Note:**

> "i clicked for christmas fluff and i got two chapters of your normal h/c nonsense what gives"
> 
> y'all. _i feel you._ i will deliver on these goods, i promise. 
> 
> (also i JUST? now realized this is one of a few fics set in New Orleans, and just wanted to promise that i picked the location sheerly on the basis of it being my place of actual residency. its gonna get hella colloquial.)


End file.
